Role at PIMS
Lecturer
Main Subject
Gregorian Chant
Inga Behrendt earned her doctorate (Dr. phil.) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz with a dissertation on the Liber ordinarius A-Gu 756 of Seckau (1345). She studied sacred music at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen (Diploma: A examination). Since 2013, Behrendt has been a lecturer (in ecclesiastical service) in Gregorian chant and German liturgical chant at the University of Church Music of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart in Rottenburg, where she also teaches choral conducting, music history (internal/external C course), and Ecclesiastical Latin. Since the winter semester 2024/2025, in addition to her work in Rottenburg, she has been a lecturer in Gregorian chant at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music (PIMS) in Rome, where she directs the PIMS Schola Gregoriana. The PIMS Schola Gregoriana opens the theological-spiritual dimension of choral chant through interpretation in accordance with Gregorian semiology.
Her academic research focuses on choral topics, particularly neumatic notation, and on 19th-century music historiography. Behrendt is a member of the research project “Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission” at Dalhousie University, Halifax. She has been a member of the board of the German-language section since 2007 and of the international board of the International Association for the Study of Gregorian Chant (AISCGre) since 2019; since 2003 she has been an active member of the working group for the creation of melodic editions of the Graduale Romanum. Since August 2023 she has been co-editor of Beiträge zur Gregorianik (ConBrio Verlag).
Uncinus is the name of a vocal ensemble that performs in various formations: as a choral schola, Uncinus male, and Uncinus female, under the direction of Inga Behrendt. The women’s choir Uncinus female is directed by Min Jung (Heidenheim), and the chamber choir Uncinus by Johannes Tress (Markdorf).
Research Interests
- Tradition, performance, and meaning of Gregorian chant and German liturgical chant in the liturgy as proclamation and in their contexts
- Transmission of Gregorian chant and its interpretation
Music historiography – shifts in perspective in music research (Hugo Riemann, Guido Adler, August Wilhelm Ambros, and others) - Musical notation in general and computer technology for optical character recognition (OCR)
- Current research questions in liturgical studies
- Psalm exegesis
Publications (selection)
- Paminger, Leonhard, Sicut lilium inter spinas. 15 motets for today’s church music practice, edited by Inga Behrendt, Musikverlag Strube (VS 6867), Munich 2016.
- Laetabundus Francisco decantet chorus, alleluia, Festschrift for Prof. Dr. Franz Karl Prassl, ed. by Réka Miklós and Inga Behrendt (Délvidéki Himnológiai Füzetek 4 / Südungarische Hymnologische Hefte 4, Gál Ferenc University, Szeged, Hungary), Szeged 2024 – ISSN 3003-9746 (Print), ISSN 3003-9754 (Online).
- “De cantu et musica sacra – Abbot Gerbert’s statements on the significance of church music” (translations of the Latin texts by Johannes Berchmans Göschl), in: Musik in Baden-Württemberg. Jahrbuch 2023/2024, Vol. 27 (2024), pp. 111–123.
Concerts, Masterclasses, and Recordings (selection)
● Sacred concerts with the ensembles Uncinus/female and Uncinus/male
● Sacred concerts with the PIMS Schola Gregoriana
● Reichenau Choral Courses, together with Prof. Dr. Christoph Hönerlage, Regensburg